It’s Mental Health Awareness Week this week! (13^th-19^th May 2024) and this years theme is all about movement! Now… you’re probably thinking that we’re going to talk about running a marathon or being hugely active. No… we’re talking about movement in general.

As humans, we often experience three things:

1. Resting
2. Activity
3. Inactivity

Which all impacts our physical health condition(s), our wellbeing, our routines, whether we plan them or not and whether they help or hinder us. In society, we are often told to focus on doing lots of things to show an element of success but that isn’t always the case because sometimes, doing too much and pushing our bodies beyond their limits can make us feel emotionally and physical exhausted.

Let’s think of our bodies as an energy tank. We build up our energy by resting and sleeping and we reduce our energy by doing our daily activities (e.g. cooking, laundry, gardening or walking the dog) and different activities reduce our energy tank at different rates. Now, if you force your body to do more activities than your energy tank can cope with, you’re going to experience a BOOM and BUST.

Research tells us that the more we go round this loop… the quicker and easier it is to become fatigued, tired, and exhausted.

How do we do movement without experiencing the boom and bust loop?

The boom and bust loop can be managed by using pacing (we talk about this often on our social media pages – you can find us on Instagram using our name @liftedtherapy). Pacing is vital for everyone because it helps us to look about both our physical and mental wellbeing and keeping our energy tank full. This is where we do our daily activities but we alternate them with rest.

We pace our activities by following these four steps:

1. Setting realistic goals in line with our values and breaking the goals into smaller chunks
2. Setting our limit and listening to our body
3. Sticking to our limit! We might find using a timer helps us to keep focused and using a range of restful activities to help us alternate
4. Keep going!

We would always advise you to speak with your medical provider, GP, medical teams before you increase any activities…! This is extremely important if you have a physical health condition including but not limited to diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, COPD, asthma etc.

What are restful activities?

Restful activities can look like lots of different things, but they help us to keep our energy levels balanced and this might include:

• Sleeping
• Watching TV
• Knitting or crafting
• Doing puzzles
• Mindful colouring
• Relaxation
• Meditation

It’s important to find something that you enjoy doing that keeps your mind focused and your body rested. What things do you enjoy doing? What have you been doing lately?

You can find out more about movement and mental health on our social media pages on Facebook and Instagram.